What Matters Most To Prejudice

European Journal of Personality Eur. J. Pers. 18: 463–482 (2004)
Published online 25 May 2004 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/per.526

What Matters Most to Prejudice: Big Five Personality, Social Dominance Orientation, or Right-Wing Authoritarianism?
BO EKEHAMMAR1*, NAZAR AKRAMI1, MAGNUS GYLJE1 and INGRID ZAKRISSON2
2 1 Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden ¨Mid Sweden University, Ostersund, Sweden

Abstract Whereas previous research has studied the relation of either (i) personality with prejudice, (ii) personality with social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), or (iii) SDO and RWA with prejudice, the present research integrates all approaches within the same model. In our study (N ¼ 183), various causal models of therelationships among the Big Five, SDO, RWA, and Generalized Prejudice are proposed and tested. Generalized Prejudice scores were obtained from a factor analysis of the scores on various prejudice instruments (racism, sexism, prejudice toward homosexuals, and mentally disabled people), which yielded a one-factor solution. The best-fitting causal model, which was our suggested hypothetical model,showed that Big Five personality had no direct effect on Generalized Prejudice but an indirect effect transmitted through RWA and SDO, where RWA seems to capture personality aspects to a greater extent than SDO. Specifically, Generalized Prejudice was affected indirectly by Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness through RWA, and by Agreeableness through SDO, whereas Neuroticismhad no effect at all. The results are discussed against the background of previous research and the personality and social psychology approaches to the study of prejudice. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION Overview During more than five decades social and personality psychologists have conducted research to explain why some people are more prejudiced than others. This researchhas emphasized two major lines of explanation—either stable factors within the individual,
*Correspondence to: Bo Ekehammar, Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Box 1225, SE-751 42 Uppsala, Sweden. E-mail: Bo.Ekehammar@psyk.uu.se Contract/grant sponsor: Swedish Research Council. Contract/grant number: 421-2002-2849.

Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 22 October2003 Accepted 26 March 2004

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that is, people’s internal attributes or personality characteristics (see e.g. Adorno, FrenkelBrunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Altemeyer, 1998; Duckitt, Wagner, du Plessis, & Birum, 2002; Ekehammar & Akrami, 2003; Heaven & St. Quintin, 2003; McFarland, manuscript submitted for publication; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), or factors linked tothe outside world, that is, people’s social identity, social self-categorization, or social position (see e.g. Guimond, 2000; Guimond, Dambrun, Michinov, & Duarte, 2003; Reynolds, Turner, Haslam, & Ryan, 2001; Schmitt, Branscombe, & Kappen, 2003; Sherif, 1967; Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner & Reynolds, 2003; Verkuyten & Hagendoorn, 1998). Within the personality approach, which is also the mainfocus of the present study, two major theoretical frameworks have been put forth to explain prejudice—authoritarian personality theory (Adorno et al., 1950) and the more recent theory of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA; see e.g. Altemeyer, 1981, 1998) on the one hand, and the recent theory of social dominance orientation (SDO; see e.g. Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994; Sidanius & Pratto,1999) on the other. Although the issue is important for the personality explanation of prejudice, hardly any attempts have been made to integrate and examine the relation of personality, RWA, SDO, and prejudice (but see McFarland, manuscript submitted for publication; Duckitt et al., 2002). Thus, past research has studied either the relation between personality and prejudice, or the relation of...